After three weeks away, nothing says, “Welcome Home!” like deer-eaten impatiens, cobwebbed stairwells, crispy tomato plants, and putrefying mouse flesh under the sink. My flower bed has been overtaken by quack grass, the pepper plants have lost their leaves, and the peas have climbed out of their bed, looking a bit haggard.

It’s good to be home.

In the mess, I found some bush beans ready for a stir fry, and shelled some of the bedded peas that didn’t look too grumpy. And my heart skipped a beat at the sight of the carrot greens.

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The determination of a weed is a fascinating thing. My niece squeals with delight when she sees a dandelion; her father waits until she’s away to mow them down. The errant sprout in my grandmother’s flower bed was plucked up by one aunt, unaware of another aunt’s determination to protect it because it was “probably a cabbage” (a sore subject that still crops up at Christmas).

I think we can all agree that carrot plants are worth keeping — even if you don’t enjoy the unmatched crunch of this beta-carotene boosted root, you can agree it has merit. So in my last garden foray in June, it felt exceptionally counterintuitive to pluck carrot greens from the soil, tossing them aside to wither. I had prepared the soil, I had planted the seeds, I had encouraged them in the style of Frog and Toad, and I had watered them; why should I now tear them up by the roots?

…Because thinning carrots gives them space to grow. And if you keep all the carrot plants you’ve sown, you’ll have a lot of good-looking greenery, but no harvest.
All the eye candy without a lick of nourishment.

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I’m wiping the proverbial dust from my brow, looking at my life’s garden, newly emptied and freshly tilled (given my recent travels, it was probably a Husqvarna rototiller).

I’d filled my garden with all sorts of wonderful things — really, really good things — but the neat, tidy rows of greenery had no space to bear fruit.

It turns out that “weeds” can be really wonderful plants. They’re just popping up in the wrong place or at the wrong time: a cabbage in the flower bed. And — without a bit of malice — they choke out the plants that should be nourished.

So I’m starting again. I’m being stingy with my seeds. And I’m keeping in mind that just because something might be a weed right now, it could be worth nurturing in another season.

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.”

Colossians 3:23

Perhaps you, too, get caught up in trying to do and grow all of the things with all of your heart, and by necessity the heart fractures in a futile attempt to be invested in too many good things.

Is it time for you to thin the carrots? To evaluate what to nurture, and what to neglect?